Long before Lucille met the head of an unlucky member of Rick’s group, another group was running around Los Angeles doing their best to avoid the many perils of the zombie apocalypse. Whether it be walkers, talkers, or other miscellaneous dangers, Fear the Walking Dead’s group has a tough road ahead of them. For Fear the Walking Dead, the most dangerous of them all may be the most unlikely of villains….critics like me.
After last season’s six part introduction, I was hoping that this first episode would pick up the action and give us more reasons to actually care about this show’s characters. Unfortunately, this season's premiere was boring. There isn’t any kinder way to put it because nothing really happened.
The hour started off with a shoddily shot escape from Los Angeles scene. What could have been an interesting and potentially exciting sequence, instead felt incredibly disconnected. While Fear the Walking Dead has an incredible cast, their acting on the beach was definitely not the quality expected. None of the reactions of the cast members seemed genuine. When Rick trembles with fear at the sight of Negan, the audience literally feels the danger. When Travis, Madison, and Christopher all struggle to escape the mass of walkers, I didn’t feel any danger whatsoever.
The drama on the Abigail wasn’t much better. While I give the writers major props for deciding to spend the season on the boat, I question their ability to keep us all entertained. With the group completely closed off from other potentially interesting characters, I worry that they may struggle to keep the drama interesting amongst the few main characters on the show.
Already off to a bad start in that department is Chris. Chris, the classical moody teen, is a cross between Carl’s early days and Ron (Jessie’s son) on any day. In the first season, he spent his time involved in a riot and causing problems for his family. Now, he spends his time mad at his father and crying over his dead mother. While I’m not saying this isn’t a somewhat compelling storyline, it isn’t exciting and, therefore, I have to complain about it. I’m hoping that Chis can direct his anger over his mother’s death to some good action sequences in the next few episodes.
Daniel Salazar was my favorite character of last season and continues to have great, if not very frequent, moments on the show. His suspicion of Strand could prove to be entertaining. I also hope to see Salazar with more screen time this season. If Salazar had been given half the screen time that Travis and Chris received in this episode, the rating at the bottom would undoubtedly be a lot higher than it is.
The most exciting moment of the first episode was Nick’s close encounter with the walker underwater. This scene was very well shot and executed. I enjoyed the tension of the mystery involved with the other boat and the fantastic camera work with the first walker he saw floating just above him.
Once Nick got inside the boat wreckage though, things, yet again, got a little boring. After quickly grabbing a yacht log (for no apparent reason), Nick found himself face to face with another walker. For some reason, the walker just suddenly got bored with Nick and stared out at the sun through the bullet holes in the side of the boat.
Over the course of the last six seasons of The Walking Dead, we’ve seen that the walkers are basically like terminators when it comes to feeding. It doesn’t matter what you do to them; they just keep coming. We’ve seen walkers without legs (rather paradoxical in a sense), walkers without jaws, and plenty of walkers get shot in the torso and be unaffected. None of these walkers got distracted before they could eat, so I don’t understand why Nick got away except to say that the writing was lazy.
Rating: 6.3/10 - Daniel Salazar and Strand are the only two interesting characters on the show and the only ones really keeping it afloat (pun completely intended). Fingers crossed for improvement next week!
